Arcanamirium

The University at the Center of the World

And He Brings Out the Chair!

The students of the Arcanamirium spend the first week of classes catching up to the more accelerated pace of university education. Other than the rigors of learning, the only event of note would be the snooping Findel Tarmikos who came into the apartment to have a chair built by the eager Sabatto. With the gnome captivated in a flurry of engineering, the visitor attempted to chat with the occupants of the apartment, only obtaining the interest of Winifred.

Week in Summary

The students arrived at the city of Absalom and moved into their new home at the towers of the Arcanamirium. A few hours into getting to know each other, the students were then ushered to the orientation which took place at a large building of strange design. After being questioned to determine their course of study, each individual is required to take an oath in front of the senior most member of the Wise Council, Professor Dhauken Tor.

After the events of the day, the students were invited to a social gathering at the roof of the tower. Many festivities were had and the students were exposed to the colorful personalities of the tower. The week ended with the students learning about their surroundings and adjusting the the new conditions of the school.

Organization

To anyone who is reading this, let me know if the information or it’s organization is confusing. I was reading what I wrote last year and I was humbled by how poorly it was written and organized. Self-proofreading is not as effective, so let me know if something is confusing or hard to find.

NPCs

I have been making a lot of NPCs this morning. As with any time I’m doing something, a thought came to me. If any of the PC’s have NPCs that they know in the school (student, staff, or even a janitor) or Absalom, you can make an NPC page for them. You can also do this mid game if you want your character to have made a friend or foe that has not already appeared.

This is mostly because I would not like to come up with more than 30 NPC’s on my own. By the way, if alot of NPC’s are interacted with, the character page might get large, so make good use of the tag system. Obviously, player generated NPCs with notable sway would need to be run by me before hand.

Additions to Character Creation

I added the one magic item of 8,000 gold or less to starting equipment.

Also, I added traits to the character creation rules, I forgot about that bit. For those who don’t know, traits are “half feats” that add a mechanical part to your background and personality. You get 2 of them at first level and only at first level, and you can’t take both in the same category of trait. Take a look at them on the srd traits page.

Mostly Figured Out

I rewrote the New Character Creation Guide. I made restrictions on spells and gear so that it can be an interesting part of the game to research new spells and obtain resources to make items.

On the subject of equipment; during the last game, I felt that making a stat bump item is important to character. The problem is that it is kinda boring to get a calculation effect. I think an item like a headband of intelligence would be more interesting if it were given to you as a status symbol of becoming a higher rank in the university.

Mechanics-wise, I would give a 5th or 6th lvl character a headband of mental stat +2. Around 8th or 9th, it would be a headband +4. Looking at character wealth, that would be just below half of the expected loot allowance to a character of those levels.

What is this idiot thinking?

Until play starts, I will use this section to write what changes are being made to the rules to keep players in the loop. I will also write my thoughts as I contemplate the various rules that we will be defining.

To start with, I copy pasted the relevant contents of the email I sent to Corienne and Nick regarding the planning questions.

In addition, I am writing the character creation rules. While writing that players can be “Up to 5th level”, I realized this: if I am limiting players to first level arcane casting, then a player taking wizard would be 2 wizard to avoid being too high level casting, and 3 in something else. That would be strange.

I think I will have players be lvl 3 or 4 starting out. If many say they want to be more powerful, we can bump it to 5 and let starting characters have up to 2nd lvl of arcane spells.
If any of you have a solution that you would like for this issue, let me know.